Reason: OP token price is significantly lower than when the initial budget was passed. This adjustment is based on the Budget Board’s ETH-OP TWAP valuation formula.

Reason: Optimism is reliant upon OP token sales and emissions for ongoing financing. This includes spending by both Foundation and governance. It does not at this time make sense to conduct a buyback of the same tokens Optimism is a net seller of. Additionally, there has been no defensible objection by Foundation to why these buybacks – if buybacks are indeed necessary – cannot be conducted without the need of an OTC desk. It is difficult to understand when existing routers on Optimism that include both DEX and offchain execution can be easily and freely accessed. Realistically, 50% revenue buybacks would amount to around $500k per month. Especially if TWAP’d, this is simple to accomplish without utilizing opaque OTC providers and excluding DEXs. It also sends a terrible message that Optimism Foundation feels it cannot buy its own token on its own chain. OTC use is simply unacceptable even if a buyback were warranted.

Reason: Alisha is the only candidate, and has served on the Security Council for several seasons.

Reason: Mariano and Ξthernaut are long-term incumbents, and offer some geographic diversification of the council. Cyfrin, Pablito (Pablo Sabbatella), Emiliano (Bonassi), and Alchemy are all strong technical candidates with a focus on security research. Lund Ventures has a legal background, which may prove useful in a war room in certain instances, and is headed by Dane Lund, who has deep organizational knowledge of Optimism, its governance, and affiliated entities. There are several other well-qualified candidates, but with only seven seats, GFX has chosen to vote in a manner that can most impact the election.

Reason: This is a case that highlights the issues with denominating pay for key roles in OP rather than dollars. At the time of initial approval OP had more than 2x the market price it enjoys today. Going forward, members of the Council should be aware of the market risk they bear by accepting OP payments, but an even better solution would be to shift towards denominating pay in currency terms rather than in-kind token terms

Reason: Note that the total is slightly higher than the 4.44m OP approved budget cap, which will result in a small, de minimis reduction to all budgets if all four are selected.

Reason: While we have consistently been of the view that the Anticapture Commission did not play a vital role, it has also evolved into one of the few “junior contributor” roles for delegates and stakeholders looking to become involved in governance. The ACC’s activities generally enforce a certain level of context amongst its active members, and a position on the ACC has served as a stepping stone to more senior roles in the past. So the ACC has value as part of the pipeline of building a more diverse and deeper bench of governance participants. However, we cannot bring ourselves to vote against its dissolution simply on the basis of being make-work.

Reason: The Budget Board revised this number up from 2,300,000 OP after delegate feedback, including our own. This budget cap doesn’t have to be spent, but is enough that it will prevent council leads from being overly competitive for resources, and better reflects that governance needs operational budget to expand to take over some activities currently run by the Foundation.

Reason: None of these are controversial changes, and only concerns about security would cause us to vote against.

Reason: Our past interactions with wildmolasses and the DAB in our capacity as grants reviewers have found him to be helpful and thoughtful.

Reason: On the one hand, quorum tends to be harder to maintain over time, and this exacerbates that problem. On the other hand, that is a larger issue that requires a comprehensive solution. Referring to practices in governmental and corporate settings, presence is typically counted towards quorum, rather than active vote. Stretching that analogy to DAOs, a vote to Abstain is effectively attendance without voting, which does count towards quorum in most settings. As additional context, we have seen other major DAOs, like Uniswap, now struggle to achieve quorum. We also view this as a low-stakes issue, since abstentions are relatively rare in Optimism DAO votes.

Reason: This overall goal for Season 8 is consistent with the emphasis on the to-be-shipped interop upgrades. Note that the Intent for Season 7 was a set of interoperable Stage 1 chains doing $250m per month in cross-chain asset transfers, despite interoperability not shipping during Season 7. This new Intent marks a significantly more conservative goal.

Reason: GFX Labs has worked closely with PGov, both during the time that Metrics and Milestones was internal to the Grants Council and during collaboration at other protocol governances. PGov operates in a professional, low-drama manner, which is exactly what is needed for the Metrics and Milestones Council.

Reason: GFX Labs has served on the Grants Council since its inception, including the Seasons where Gonna has been the Lead. He has done an excellent job to date, and we have full confidence in his ability to continue to deliver value to OP holders through an organized, publicized, and thoughtful grants program.

Reason: https://gov.optimism.io/t/gfx-labs-delegate-communication-thread/2728/53

Reason: Recommendation: Vote For. Overall, this is a solid slate of initial members. Over time, we would like to see a steady movement away from Labs and Foundation affiliates given the potential for conflicts of interest that creates, since representatives are supposed to represent Citizen and Token Houses. Dane Lund, the proposed lead, was the inaugural lead for the Optimism Grants Council, which has generally been a success and has become the template for many grants programs outside Optimism.